Unsatisfactoriness

The Second of the Three Characteristics of Existence
In this eight-week course, we will investigate the unsatisfactory and ungovernable experience that often characterizes our lives. The Buddha taught that suffering arises due to our attachment and resistance to change. With practice, it is possible to meet unsatisfactoriness with equanimity, thus opening the door to insight.

Passage below from David Whyte’s The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship

What we withhold from ourselves is he willingness to understand our own imperfections. The strategic, intellectual self, looking in from the outside, cannot have the experience of sheer physical vulnerability that the deeper internal self must gain to walk through the door of self-compassion. Just as we must leave our partner with certain struggles that are entirely their own, so we must leave our deeper self alone to suffer through the confrontation with its own flaws and imperfections. By letting ourselves alone in this radical way, we actually demonstrate a freeing form of love for that emerging inner person. (335)